Some of us complain about the cost of energy to power our homes. Just for a second think about how our lives would be without electricity. I, like most of you.. have experienced brief blackouts. These usually last no more than a couple of hours. Today I was faced with no electricity for 10 hours as cable maintenance was carried out by Sydney's major grid operator. So at 7am on the dot the switch was pulled and I was transported back to the dark ages. Just think how many things are electric powered.. No computer, no oven or cooktop, no television or CD player. So I killed 10 tedious hours by reading, looking at old photos, recleaning the pool and generally twiddling my thumbs until 5pm when the electricity was reconnected.
Electricity has made our lives good here in the North. We are seldom without power for more than a few hours. The exceptions have been a wildfire that caused power to be out for several days in the summer, and an out of 18 hours when it was -37 F. (~-38 C.). We were without central heat, water, or light during the darkest month of the year. We used kerosene (paraffin) lamps and a wood stove to keep us comfortable and to keep the pipes from freezing.
Our power was out for over 2 weeks after Hurricane Ike hit the Houston area a few years ago. It was September, miserably humid and HOT. If I didn't murder anyone during that time I guess I never will. That was the most miserable I can ever remember being. Mosquitoes buzzing, spoiled food, pitch black darkness, no relief. UGH.
@Craig Swanson That is a really long time for electricity to be out for ANY reason, other than natural disaster. Australians must have much better dispositions and patience than Americans. 10 hours absolutely wouldn't fly. It would cause a frenzy in the national news.
Makes my experience yesterday seem like a picnic in comparison. That musta been hell. I recall back in the 70s Sydney regularly had blackouts. I was working in department store sales at the time.. Can you imagine serving customers by candle lite.
@Craig Swanson , that couldn't be done now. All the registers depend on electricity. Actually, I think they are all computerized somehow. If the power goes out for a long time, we will all starve.
That is exactly what happened here when we had the bad tornadoes several. Years back, and didn’t have any electricity for about 2 weeks. Thankfully, we did still have water, but the stores were not able to operate because of the registers needing electricity, and probably internet . Mostly, no one could go anywhere anyway, because of all of the downed trees and power lines across the roads, but even when we were able to travel in limited areas, nothing was open for a person to actually go to. No gas or food, because it all required electricity. We had some of those little solar lamps, and I set them out in the best sunlight each morning, and brought them in for light at night. The tornado had taken more of the roof off of the house and then drowned everything in the torrential rainstorms, so we could only use the main room of the house, and the bathrooms (which didn’t have furniture), but of course, no hot water.
Our power provider is doing cable upgrades so power was turned off to avoid danger to workers. We accepted it. The worst part now is looking at my once pristine lawn after their digger trashed it. They have promised to lay fresh grass tho.
Living in very rural Missouri Ozarks, 1999-2012, we were in the middle of Mark Twain National Forest, 7 million acres of small mountains, heavy forest, and few towns. Our 300 acres was situated on a gravel road 4 miles from the paved highway. One neighbor, almost a mile away from us, revealed that as a kid, he remembered when electric power had finally been brought in, early 1950s! The power poles were therefore half a century old, wooden, and prone to failure very often, usually due to wind. We had power outages weekly, sometimes. I doubt an entire month went by during our years there that power was not out at all. One really severe storm knocked us out on a Sunday. Without power, understand, we had no water, or telephone. We had a very good water well, but it needed power. Fortunately, heat was no problem, we heated exclusively with firewood. By Wednesday, I feared for our food in the fridge. The freezer was nearly up to 32 degrees, the fridge >60. Thursday morning, I drove the 55 miles to Rolla, where I bought a 4000 watt generator. Got her running that afternoon. By careful circuit breaker manipulating, I managed to keep the place running. T-V, freezer, and fridge ran all at one time, along with lighting. Black River Electric Cooperative, our supplier, finally got us "up" during the 11th. day of the outage. Wouldn't you know it, my wife was at the time visiting her kin in Indiana! I have always believed that electricity is the best and biggest bargain that we have. Frank
Horrendous!! bad enough not to have power, but to have to live in a flooded home with half the roof off, and no hot water and not be able to buy food...., you must have been at the end of your tether!!